Greetings, one and all, and welcome to Reaper Reviews, where I'll be sharing my thoughts and recommendations on as much fiction as I can manage. Hopefully you noticed the brief blurb beneath the blog title (which would mean I'm doing my job in the design department **fingers crossed**), but in case you missed it, it says:
Looking for your next read? Madam Reaper here, bringing you book reviews on all things fantasy, YA, and **shudders** romance. Ironic? Quite possibly.
You may be wondering why I chose the name Reaper Reviews for this blog, given the genres of books I'm planning to review, and if you are, fear not. You're not alone. Before I've even managed to fully get this blog off the ground, I've had several people ask or assume I'll be featuring books within the horror and suspense genre. It's not a bad assumption to make. If I were in your shoes, rather than my own, I'd probably make the same one. But seeing as I'm wearing my own shoes ... well, technically I'm barefoot, because I don't make a habit of wearing shoes to bed ... anyway, here's a bit of backstory to answer your question.
I've always loved to write. Whether it was making up stories as a child, writing essays in high school (yes, I did actually enjoy that--so sue me), writing poetry which I then shared and competed with, and finally finishing my first attempt at a novel (no, it's never seen the light of day, but perhaps someday), I enjoyed every minute of it. So, several years ago, when I submitted a short story which was accepted for publication by a small indie publishing company, I was ecstatic. Stitched Smile Publications dealt with mostly horror and dark fiction, which I was not accustomed to writing under regular circumstances; at that point in my life, however, I found I had plenty of inspiration for the dark, depressing, and dangerous, and viewing this chance as an opportunity to expand my portfolio and grow as an author, I eagerly signed a contract with the company and started working on my first collection of short stories knowing the endgame was publication.
I found I wasn't scared to write about death; in truth, death was the reoccurring theme in the set of stories I would later decide to title "Reaper." It didn't take long for the rest of the members of the SSP team to start calling me Madam Reaper, and the title stuck. I developed an online identity using this title, both to help promote my work and because, quite simply, I loved that the people I had grown so close with had given me a name. I even went so far as to get inked.
Fast forward a couple years. After a lot of personal struggles, a lot of upheaval, so many changes, I made the decision that writing strictly dark fiction wasn't for me. Most of the writing I did during that period came from some really dark places and moments inside my head, and while I'm proud of the work I was able to create from that, I wasn't in a healthy place. Once I managed to come out the other side of that, I found writing dark fiction to be fairly difficult, because I didn't have any natural inspiration anymore. And while on the one hand, that was hard to acknowledge, on the other hand, staying in a bad mental situation just for the sake of creating a very specific type of craft wasn't something that I could wish on myself.
I made the decision, and was overwhelmingly supported in that decision, to cut ties with SSP, because I couldn't meet their needs anymore, and I needed to search elsewhere to get my own needs met. All of my colleagues there--Lisa Vasquez, Jeff Brown, Donelle Pardee Whiting, James Matthew Byers, and so many more--they're awesome people who made a lasting impression on my life, and I'm blessed to still keep in contact with them all and call them friends.
Anyway, getting back to the topic at hand ...
I've been putting everything together to get this blog started for the last few weeks, and I had originally planned to create a brand new "identity" for it; one to write under, share content, brand and market, you know. All that crazy social media junk. But my husband was like, "Why create something new? You already have an established online identity. It's small, sure, but it's there. There's no reason for you to completely start over." To which I replied, "Yeah, but it's Madam Reaper. You know, death, scythe, horror ... Won't that be what people expect? Can I really make Madam Reaper work for something different?" His answer was: You can make Madam Reaper work for whatever you want it to. You can associate Madam Reaper with whatever you choose to associate it with.
And you know what? I think he's right.
So I'm going all in, placing my bets, and hoping that doing something unexpected doesn't end up completely biting me in the ass.
So what can you expect from me going forward?
I'll be reviewing pretty much every book I read from here on ouUt; those books will fall under one of more of the following genres: fantasy/supernatural/paranormal, YA/NA, and romance. I know, that's a lot of slashes, but there's so much shifting going on currently within these definitions; basically, if a story's got some sort of fantasy element, some sort of romance element, and/or it's marketed for people between the ages of 16-40, there's a good possibility I'll give the book a go.
My TBR pile is currently out of control; that doesn't count the ridiculous amount of books I'm waiting to download and read on Kindle Unlimited. It's safe to say, I have plenty of ammunition. However, if you've got a story you're dying to share or would like my take on, feel free to leave a comment, and I'll add it to the list. I'm looking forward to getting to know you all and having some scintillating--and civil--conversations and discussions about these brand new worlds I've visited.
Keep turning pages. Until next time ...
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